The Presidio

The Presidio casts Mark Harmon as Jay Austin, a San Francisco police detective who’s forced to team up with a military commander (Sean Connery’s Alan Caldwell) after a murder is committed on the title army base – with the film detailing the pair’s efforts at solving the crime and also Jay’s burgeoning romance with Alan’s fetching daughter (Meg Ryan’s Donna). Filmmaker Peter Hyams opens The Presidio with an impressively exciting car chase that, when combined with the rousing introduction to Harmon’s character, seems to lay the groundwork for a fast-paced thriller, and yet the movie quickly segues into a less-than-engrossing midsection devoted primarily to the mismatched protagonists’ rather routine investigation. (It’s clear, too, that the erratic narrative suffers from an ongoing emphasis on Jay and Donna’s somewhat tedious relationship.) There’s little doubt, then, that the film benefits substantially from Connery’s typically magnetic performance and the sporadic inclusion of unexpectedly engrossing sequences, with the best and most obvious example of the latter a thoroughly captivating foot chase through San Francisco’s Chinatown. (And one can’t help but get a kick, of course, out of the interlude in which Alan takes down a barroom bully with just his thumb.) The lack of a compelling villain doesn’t help the movie’s uneven atmosphere, to be sure, although it’s certainly hard to deny the effectiveness of the gleefully over-the-top shootout that closes the proceedings – which ultimately does confirm The Presidio‘s place as a watchable, occasionally enthralling ’80s thriller.

*** out of ****